The present application is directed to nuts which are designed to be clinched by or otherwise secured to carrier material. In the art, such nuts are referred to as "clinch nuts". The present invention is directed to an apparatus for severing a lead nut from a plurality of attached nuts and for securing such a lead nut to carrier material. More particularly, this invention is directed to an apparatus for securing such a clinch nut to carrier material without generation of carrier-material waste.
Securement of clinch nuts to carrier material, such as a sheet-metal panel, is rarely a one-step procedure. Often, a first step is the forming of a hole in the panel, and a second step, performed at some time thereafter, is the securement of the nut to the panel at the hole.
For a variety of reasons, nuts which are to be secured to carrier material often are attached to each other in a linear fashion, which often can become quite lengthy. A lengthy arrangement of attached nuts is occasionally wound onto a spool or otherwise arranged in a coil-like manner. It is desirable to have an apparatus which incorporates, in a single action, the severing of a lead nut from an arrangement of like attached nuts and the securing of such a lead nut to carrier material. Many commercially available clinch nut-securing apparatuses either generate waste when forming the hole in the panel or do not use portions of the panel, located in the immediate vicinity of the hole formed in the panel, to secure the nut to the panel.